ABSTRACT

In the “era of sharing economy 2.0”, China’s B&Bs industry enjoys rapid development as a new business format, boosting regional economy to reach a new height. This paper selects the Yangtze River Delta region, China’s largest economic zone, as the research area, and takes exploratory spatial data analysis (ESDA) and GIS to study the agglomeration characteristics and evolutionary trajectories of B&Bs spatial patterns amid 2013–2017. The results indicate that: (1) B&Bs in the Yangtze River Delta region exhibit balanced development. (2) From the perspective of global spatial autocorrelation analysis, B&Bs spatial distribution features significant spatial autocorrelation, with spatial agglomeration degree on the rise. (3) From the perspective of local spatial autocorrelation analysis, it gradually shows a gradual decreasing pattern from the east to the west, forming a significant high concentration of eastern cities and a low concentration of western cities. By comparing the results of the 3 years, Huzhou and Shanghai showed a significant high concentration from 2013 to 2015, and neighboring cities such as Suzhou, Jiaxing and Hangzhou have shown a high approaching trend, indicating that in recent years, the development awareness of the industry is converging. (4) The four factors: endowment of tourism resources, transportation convenience, policy conditions and residents’ living standards exert important influences on B&Bs spatial distribution.